Eighty-three.
That is how many people have died since September 2nd, the day the Trump administration began their ongoing campaign of strikes on boats in the Caribbean sea. It has alleged that these strikes have been on boats smuggling drugs into the United States, however, the administration has repeatedly failed to provide concrete evidence of these strikes before and after conducting them. These failures to abide by the standards of military and international law have also raised tension with Venezuela to the point that war is seriously being considered.
Other actions that have massively raised the tension between the United States and Venezuela include the deployment of the USS Iwo Jima and Gerald R. Ford, an alleged test run of B-52 bombers miles from the coast of Venezuela, and the implementation of black operations in Venezuela, which Trump announced at a press conference, without any regard for the safety of personnel in Venezuela.
The current crisis with Venezuela that has resulted from the Trump Administration’s actions is an incredibly dangerous, unconstitutional and illegal misadventure that risks dragging the United States into a full-blown war with Venezuela that would be nothing short of disastrous for the people of both countries and for our international standing.
First, the actions the administration has taken against Venezuela are both unconstitutional and illegal. These are military actions that have not been approved by Congress, and whose only authority is in the whims of the President and the Secretary of Defense. It is also illegal under international law, as the strikes are not only extrajudicial killings and therefore a violation of human rights, it is in violation of the United Nations’ doctrine of no war unless in self-defense.
Second, the war that could result from these actions would be a humanitarian disaster for Venezuela and a severe risk to the well-being of Americans. The Administration’s goals have been heavily implied to be the removal of Nicholas Maduro’s government. Assuming this goal remains during a potential war, our recent incursions into regime-change and nation building (Iraq and Afghanistan) have utterly failed to succeed in their goals, which is unlikely to change in a war with Venezuela, a country that is already heavily polarized in its views of the United States and would not receive an invasion of their country well, or peacefully. Moreover, the already egregious humanitarian crisis that has occurred since Venezuela in the mid-2010s would be exacerbated by a war with the United States, damaging the nation beyond repair, potentially killing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of civilians, and resulting in another mass exodus from the country.
Third, whatever objectives justify the war would be impossible to implement or achieve. If Maduro and his Government were removed, how would the power vacuum that would result be filled? How would the country transition to Democracy? How would the violence that would ensue from said power vacuum be subdued? How would the country be rebuilt not just from the conflict, but the humanitarian crisis that has ravaged Venezuela for the past decade? The country is a dictatorship that is marred by extremely high poverty, inflation and crime, and these are not easy problems to fix; responding to these issues with a war would only inflame them.
Simply put, these provocations are poorly thought-out attempts for Donald Trump and his administration to pose as men of action, provocations that have now resulted in the death of dozens of people in the Caribbean and brought America to the brink of war with another sovereign country.
